Shifting Sands of Peace: A Conversation about the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict with Dr. Nathan Brown

In this episode, we venture into the heart of a historical maelstrom—the Middle East conflict. Dr. Nathan Brown, professor at George Washington University and Middle East scholar, joins this episode, and paints a vivid picture of the intricate dance between political ideologies, territorial strife, and the pursuit of peace.

We explore the roots of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, examining how the British mandate's contradictory promises set the stage for decades of unrest. We navigate through the watershed moments post-1948 and the pivotal Six-Day War, dissecting the complex mechanics of peace negotiations that have, so far, failed to yield a lasting resolution. Shifts in perspective, both within Israeli and Palestinian factions, have reshaped the landscape, while changing American political tides have cast the conflict in a new light—one of social justice and human rights.

Uncover the hidden threads that bind American Christian groups to Israel, influenced by the Republican Party's embrace of Israeli right-wing politics, as well as the different generational perspective on the conflict that is fracturing the Democratic Party. This episode is a tapestry of tragedy and hope, exploring the events of October 7th, 2023, and their seismic repercussions on the region's future.

As we examine the current Israeli political climate, the global reaction to its far-right government, and the implications for the peace process, we're reminded of the human toll this enduring conflict has exacted. This episode is not just a chronicle of events but a call to empathy; a recognition of the suffering on all sides and the need for a compassionate approach to forge a path towards peace. Join us as we consider the challenge of articulating Palestinian perspectives more broadly and reflect on how understanding and compassion remain our best hope in a world too often divided by conflict.

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Governing Gaza After the War

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Transcript

Dr. Brown: 0:00

it becomes increasingly an issue for some Christian groups within the country, and especially those that are more politically active in the Republican Party. So you have them beginning to say wait a second, if you're a good Christian, you've got to support a Jewish state in Palestine. That really means supporting the state of Israel and of course there are plenty of Christians who have all kinds of different opinions about this. But if you look at how it is that those Christian leaders, associated especially with the Republican Party and especially with the right wing of the Republican Party, talk, israel and pro-Israel sentiment become larger and larger and larger. And it's not just pro-Israel sentiment, but it's actually sentiments that are very sympathetic to the arguments of the Israeli right that say not only should Israel exist, but Israel should have complete control of biblical territory of Israel and there's no room for a Palestinian state government.

Shawn: 1:04

Gaza is a narrow coastal territory of about two million people, overwhelmingly Palestinians, sandwiched between Israel and Egypt. It's governed in limited fashion by Hamas, an anti-Israeli Islamist group. On October 7th of 2023, hamas launched a devastating attack from Gaza on Israel. On that day alone, over 1,200 lives were lost and more than 240 hostages were taken. Israel responded with military force, plunging the region into chaos. Since October 7th, it's estimated that over 11,000 Palestinians have been killed, and of those, about 4,600 have been children.

Shawn: 1:46

I grew up with the Middle East being at the forefront of American foreign policy across numerous presidencies, all working towards some lasting peace in the region, and especially between Israelis and Palestinians. But, in all honesty, I'm not really familiar with the root of the conflict and how it's evolved and, as a result, how to place the events of October 7th into some context that helps me understand how critical this situation may continue to be and if peace is ever a viable solution in the region. And, judging from how I hear most other people talk about the conflict, they don't really know either, but they all seem to have an opinion. So today I'm talking to Dr Nathan Brown, professor at George Washington University and leading scholar on the Middle East. Dr Brown is a former Guggenheim fellow and Carnegie scholar who has served as an advisor to the committee drafting the Palestinian Constitution and currently serves on the board of trustees at the American University in Cairo. We talk about the history of conflict in the Middle East region, particularly the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, how it's evolved, what happened on October 7th, what it means for the possibility of any lasting peace in the region and how the American response is so critical to how this all plays out. If you liked this episode, or any episode, please give it a like on your favorite podcast platform and or subscribe to the podcast on YouTube. And, as always, if you have any thoughts, questions or comments, please feel free to email me at deepdivewithSeanatgmailcom.

Shawn: 3:16

Let's do a deep dive. Dr Brown, thanks for being here. How are you Good? Thanks for having me. Let's start here, which I think is maybe going back in time a bit, because the events of October 7th didn't happen in some kind of a vacuum. There's some history to it. I think to most people and I include myself as one of them average news consumers or maybe people that are kind of ancillarily interested in historical events the Arab-Israeli conflict begins post-World War I, and that would be with the Declaration of Israel as a state in 1948. But to my limited understanding, the history is really much more complex and has roots much further back in time, and so I guess I'm wondering if it's possible for you to give an overview of this conflict that does maybe a bit more justice to the actual history than just Israel was created, and the Arab world is perhaps angry about it.

Dr. Brown: 4:14

I actually think that sort of standard story is not necessarily a bad place to start. It's not because there was no history prior to the 20th century, but because that's really when we get the conflict in its current form, which is a conflict between two national communities. So Jews were certainly in the world before 1948. Palestinians and Arabs certainly have historical roots going back pretty far. But in essence, what I would say is this is not a post-World War two conflict. It was born in the period really after the First World War, when you have a Jewish national movement arise and there are people in the territory known as Palestine who are increasingly uncomfortable with that, and uncomfortable becomes a mild understatement over time. So the Jewish national movement, zionism, was really about saying Jews are people, jews are religion, jews are all over the world, but fundamentally Jews are a national community, and a national community, I mean, this is the period of nationalism. National communities need to have their own state. They need to be able to build up not just religious institutions, not just have cultural production. They really need some core territory to be able to express themselves. And of course, this was at a time when Jews are increasingly feeling unwelcome in Europe. Most Jews in Europe stay, or they go to North America, they go to other places. But this Zionist movement says we've got to go and recreate the Jewish national home in Palestine and there is a community there of people that we call Palestinian. Now the term Palestinian certainly would have been known then, but that were Arabic speaking, predominantly Muslim with a large Christian minority. There were actually Jews who were resident in Palestine, who would have had Arabic as a first language.

Dr. Brown: 6:17

But the British get control of this territory after World War I it had been part of the Ottoman Empire before and that the British get control of the territory with a mandate from the League of Nations. And the League of Nations basically said two things Number one you, great Britain, are responsible for this territory, but you're responsible in getting it ready for independence. And the second thing that the League of Nations mandates, that is, that you are required to facilitate the construction of a Jewish national home in Palestine. That's about four declarations. Declaration of British policy during World War I then gets written into the League of Nations mandate.

Dr. Brown: 7:00

So they're supposed to do two things at once facilitate Palestinian independence and facilitate the construction of a Jewish national home. Whatever that meant. Nobody was quite clear what it meant to do both those things at the same time. That ultimately becomes impossible because, with increasing Jewish integration to Palestine, the non-Jews in Palestine coalesce against the idea of creation of a Jewish national home and you finally have the bridge mandate collapse. In the post-World War II period, as you say, the state of Israel is declared on about two thirds of that territory and the other third is controlled by surrounding Arab states, jordan and Egypt. The core of the conflict is we see it right now, and over territory, this territory, dispute between two national movements a Palestinian national movement and a Zionist and a Jewish national movement. That really is something that's born in the 20th century.

Shawn: 8:02

Is it too reductive to say that or to characterize this as being primarily a territorial issue or a geographic issue? And the reason I ask is I guess, I wonder, in another world, where there was some piece of undeclared, uninhabited land that was amenable to Jews and that was Israel was built out of that cloth and it didn't intersect in any way with any other type of National community, would we have the same issue?

Dr. Brown: 8:32

Even with that inhabited? No, I don't think. I don't think you would have, but it wasn't happening right and so yet that that's really what it is. It becomes a territorial conflict when people begin to think about okay, how are we going to square this circle, how are we going to treat both of these peoples? And they're increasingly seen themselves as people fairly, and so the idea of Partition comes up. It comes up as early as the 1930s, like let's just divide this territory, let's make it a territorial conflict. That's the sort of thing where you can sit down and negotiate borders and so on, and it's a controversial idea. It's not accepted by large portions of either side, but that's when it becomes seen, at least partly as a territorial conflict.

Shawn: 9:16

So you mentioned Negotiating borders, and I guess that brings me to my next question, which is since, essentially, its creation History in this area is riddled with some type of negotiated piece in the Middle East. But if we take this in the context, as you've just explained it, and then we consider the events of October 7th, which I want to talk about in a minute, generally, in hindsight, it does appear as if these negotiations have all been failures. They haven't amounted to any type of long-standing or enduring piece. So is it fair to characterize the situation this way, or is there maybe some more nuance that you know Isn't entirely obvious to me or that I'm not capturing?

Dr. Brown: 9:53

There's a little bit more nuance. But I think a failure is Definitely an appropriate term to use. If what you mean by success is some kind of negotiated peaceful settlement that is acceptable to all parties. That just hasn't happened. There have been some long-term arrangements to be negotiated.

Dr. Brown: 10:12

So, state of Israel, this glare in 1948. There is at that point a series of armistice agreements negotiated between the new state of Israel and the surrounding Arab states. So this is not just a cease-fire, it's an armistice. There are lines drawn up, there is some kind of idea of starting some kind of process for negotiating some kind of more, something more permanent even than an armistice. Those go nowhere and it kind of sits there for about 20 years or so.

Dr. Brown: 10:42

That is to say, this was a situation that didn't kind of press itself as Critical or urgent. You know it would be flirt, flare ups and sometimes, you know, in 1956 it was an actual war. But those periods aside, the armistice basically seemed to hold and there wasn't a lot of pressing diplomatic attention to Resolving it. If what again at what we need by resolution is some kind of permanent settlement acceptable to all parties, that's really. It only happens in 1967, when there's an Israeli Arab War which winds up with Israel in control of the entire territory of Palestine, the West Bank and Gaza, which would be, which are with those parts of Palestine that they hadn't controlled at the end of the 1948 war. There's something control of all of this. This is when you begin to get a UN Security Council resolutions on the subject, when you begin to get periodic high-level diplomacy and the United States Intermittently gets involved in trying to find some kind of negotiated settlement, first between Israel and the surrounding Arab states, and then later on between Israel and Palestinians.

Shawn: 11:48

And so then, october 7th last year. So to someone like me, this seems to have come out of nowhere, but I wonder if perhaps this was inevitable and maybe, maybe the timing wasn't as predictable, but to folks like, maybe yourself, that this was Inevitable, maybe on the margins, the scale was a bit of a surprise. To that end, can you help explain, maybe, what happened on October 7th of last year and kind of the subsequent events since, but in doing so, the why of it and and and and how we can understand these events in the context of the history that you've just explained to us?

Dr. Brown: 12:26

I'm sure it has a very complex background. It was deeply shocking and it is, I think, an important transition point. But it doesn't come out of nowhere as you suggest. So in the mid 1990s the Israeli and Palestinian leadership finally began to try to come to terms with each other as national communities. So the Israeli leadership under Yusuf Rabin was in prime minister, palestinian leadership, head of the PLO, palestinian liberation organization, yasser Harfa, essentially say we're going to recognize each other as a legitimate and we will sit down and negotiate Some kind of final agreement between the two of us. While we are doing that, palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza will be allowed some measure of autonomy and be allowed to manage their own affairs. And the problem was that the first part of that was just got nowhere. Any kind of Israeli, palestinian agreement, peace settlement just didn't happen. The negotiations were basically still born. The second part of that, palestinian autonomy, in the meantime was Imperfectly implemented. But you do have this creation called the Palestinian Authority that is supposed to be governing Palestinian from the West Bank and Gaza when the first part of that process, the peace process between Israel and Palestine, is collapsed in and there's violence who is referred to as the Palestinian uprising of of 2000, subsequent years happened. The conflict enters a new phase in in that 2006 you have an attempt to sort of reconfigure things on the Palestinian side with new Palestinian elections, which the Americans, the international community are very supportive of saying look, if we can get a strong Palestinian leadership out of this, then we will be able to kind of resume negotiations with Israel and those elections, for a variety of reasons, produce a majority In palace, in parliament, read by Hamas, this Islamic movement, which says we reject this entire negotiation process. And that was a problem. The Israelis reacted and the Americans reacted saying essentially, this is unacceptable and the there was an attempt essentially to bring pressure on the Palestinian political system to get rid of Hamas and it wound up not with getting rid of Hamas but with essentially an intra-Palestinian civil war, with one half of it having control of the West Bank that's run by Fata, when the Palestinian political action is head by Mahmoud Amaraz and Hamas is in control of Gaza. So that's a situation that exists. From 2007 forwards.

Dr. Brown: 15:09

Hamas has always said we're not about running Gaza. We didn't start, you know, the Islamic resistance movement, which is the full name of Hamas in Arabic, the Islamic resistance movement. We didn't start Hamas in order to become Municipal administrators in the Gaza Strip, and so they were always looking for some way to break out of this, to maintain their hold in Gaza. Not be thrown out of Gaza that's kind of a total in Palestinian politics but somehow move things forward. Their periodic outbursts of rocket fire from Gaza Israel, israel respond extremely harshly, periodic rounds of fighting.

Dr. Brown: 15:45

When I first heard the news on October 6th, I thought what I thought was this is a replay of that. This is another attempt by Hamas essentially to let people know we're still here. For whatever reason, mass chose a much more ambitious set of attacks, one that resulted in 1200 Israeli casualties along the the border of Gaza, and so the idea that Hamas was trying to break out of this, that Hamas was saying the status quo, is unacceptable. There's the fact that Hamas was trying to upset the apple cart. None of that was news. The extent of success that they had and the number of casualties Was deeply shocking.

Dr. Brown: 16:30

I think it was probably a surprise to the Hamas leadership itself, but it was also one that Generated an extremely strong reaction in Israeli society, an interpretation that said basically okay, we thought we had some kind of modus the bendy. Now we discovered that really a lot of Israelis reacting this way Hamas wants us dead. That's their agenda. There's no compromise, there's no living with this group. We have to destroy it, and so that's how this, these October attacks, really became a C change. A conflict that had been bitter and violent, but sort of carry it out within some kind of constraints. Suddenly all constraints were off.

Shawn: 17:12

I You've touched on this, I think inherent in your response, but we hear often about a two-state solution. What I know is that it's not a viable solution for Israelis or for Israel, and it's something that Palestinians desperately want. And, primarily, I don't know if this is the reason. Gaza is often referred to as like an open-air prison and, as you kind of mentioned, you know it's more of like a municipal administration than it is any type of autonomous governing situation.

Shawn: 17:46

I would assume that a two-state solution would solve that problem. Can you help me understand why it's not a viable option for Israel?

Dr. Brown: 17:54

Well, yeah, I would say it's a bit more complicated than that. So the idea of territorial partition, essentially you have a Jewish entity, the national entity and the Palestinian national entity. That goes back to the 1930s, when the idea is first proposed. And you know there are all kinds of questions okay, where are you going to draw the line? And what happens with Palestinians who live within the Jewish national entity, and this sort of thing, and it's unpopular. First, from a Palestinian point of view, they're saying wait a second, we're at the parliament 30th, we're the vast majority in this country. By all means, you know, jews are welcome to stay here, but those who are already here? But we can't be dividing this place in half. We're at this point, you know, 80, 90% of the population, and so it was rejected on that side in 1948, actually, when the British mandate ended. The British said we can't handle this situation anymore, we're pulling out. And the United Nations set up a special committee on Palestine which recommended partition. And once again the Palestinian leadership said hold on a second. This isn't fair. This isn't the way to do it. We can have a single state that is home for everybody. The partition plan divides us incredibly unfairly. We reject the plan. And so up until really the 1970s, the bulk of the Palestinian national movement said forget about partition. We need a Palestinian state which includes Christians, jews, muslims, palestinians, israelis, everybody. In the 1970s Palestinian national leadership began to think well, maybe the best we can get is partition. And not until 1988 do they formally declare what they call a palatination. A palatination, a declaration of independence which recognizes the United Nations partition plan from 1948. They say this was unfair. But look, we'll accept it. And then it becomes kind of a question from the Palestinian point of view of negotiating a two-state outcome with Israel. Where are you going to draw the line? Who's going to have which kinds of rights? What about Palestinians who've been forced out of this territory, refugees and Lebanon surrounding countries? Do they get to come back? Those are the sorts of things we'll have to negotiate. But fundamentally we accept a two-state solution.

Dr. Brown: 20:13

Israeli leadership didn't sign on at that point. They said, beginning in the 1990s okay, we'll recognize Palestinians as a national community. You have the Oslo Accord, there's some agreement between Yitzhakar Biman and Yasser Arafat. They said we'll recognize you as a national community, we'll recognize each other. But the Israelis held out. They said we're not agreeing to a Palestinian state. Maybe as part of negotiation we'll agree to that. And so you had the Palestinians at this point pressing much stronger for a Palestinian state and pressing for a two-state solution, and the Israelis won't endorse it. The Americans won't endorse it.

Dr. Brown: 20:52

My favorite example here is in 1998, hillary Clinton, which she was first lady, said in a public address made some reference to a Palestinian state being an outcome of the negotiation process. The White House spokesman says the next day she doesn't speak for the White House, and she was living in the White House but she didn't speak for it. And so the idea of a Palestinian state and two-state solution was unspeakable from the Israeli and the American side. Then people thought that it might be a possible outcome, but they said essentially that's a reward to hold out for the Palestinians. It's something that will come only if they give concessions, all kinds of concessions. So not until the 2000s does there become as much stronger international consensus for Palestinian state.

Dr. Brown: 21:34

Bill Clinton mentioned the idea at the very, very final date of his presidency. George Bush picks it up, and that's when you have the phrase two-state solution, enter the international ex-Akharis. Well, of course everybody knows what the solution is. There needs to be a two-state solution and now let's negotiate the details. That's really only that. That kind of thinking is really only about two decades old, a little bit more than two decades old.

Dr. Brown: 22:01

And the problem was that, although the idea then gets accepted diplomatically internationally, you've got problems on both sides Israeli and Palestinian side where people are turning away from it. On the Israeli side he said wait a second. You know, we agreed to the construction of Palestinian authority and that's not even a state. And look how many, how much problems are causing us with the anti-farm or the election of Hamas. Forget this. We're not, we're not so sold on the idea of a two-state solution. So you have Israelis turning their backs on it and you have an Israeli right wing that's growing more powerful saying hold on a second, that territory that's allocated for a Palestinian state, that's part of our historic homeland. As Jews we can't give that up. So you have the Israeli population sort of slowly swinging against it.

Dr. Brown: 22:50

Now the Palestinian side. They're saying hey, we agreed to this peace process, we agreed to go along, and it's not delivering a Palestinian state. It's not that we're against a two-state solution, but we've got to wake up and smell the coffee. It's not happening and talk about a two-state solution and this international, all these international conferences, is just a way to mask the reality on the ground, which is taking us step by step, every single day, in the wrong direction for us. And then, of course, with the split between West Bank and Gaza, between Fatah and Hamas in 2007, you even have a split national leadership on the Palestinian side. So the two-state solution, which is, as I say, something that becomes almost every single international diplomat, begins to endorse it about 20 years ago. It begins to increasingly seem like for people on the ground, like this isn't happening, this isn't happening anytime soon. It may never be happening. All the trends of pointing in a different direction. So international diplomacy was talking one way, while facts on the ground were moving the other direction.

Shawn: 23:58

So we're recording this. On February 13th and overnight, the US Senate approved an aid package for both Israel and Ukraine, but I don't know if you've been following this. The leadership in the House, which is Republican leadership, has essentially said that it's pretty much dead on arrival, and I think that's primarily because of the Ukraine aid that's attached to it. This is maybe a rough characterization, but I am interested in how this issue, this situation between Israel and Palestine specifically, has evolved into a left-right issue, with the right being more aligned with Israel and the left being more aligned with Palestine.

Dr. Brown: 24:38

This is something that's fairly new. It's been growing for a few years, I wouldn't say, but historically it hasn't been a partisan issue, or at least not a mature sense. There have been times when Republicans have been seen as more pro-Arem, or at least less a better view of Israel, than the time that Democrats have been seen that way. But essentially there's a lot of continuity in policy between Democratic and Republican administrations, and certainly when there was a viable peace process, which I would say during the first Bush and the Clinton administrations, arguing in the second Bush administration you even have continuity of people. Some of the same people are involved in this. But I think things are happening in the United States that are pushing in a different direction in both the Republican and Democratic parties.

Dr. Brown: 25:29

In the Republican Party, there's an increasing sense that this is not just an issue for Jewish Americans, about Jewish national rights, but it becomes increasingly an issue for some Christian groups within the country, and especially those that are politically active in the Republican Party. So you have then beginning to say wait a second. If you're a good Christian, you've got to support a Jewish state in Palestine. That really means supporting the state of Israel, and of course there are plenty of Christians who have all kinds of different opinions about this. But if you look at how it is that those Christian leaders, associated especially with the Republican Party and especially with the right wing of the Republican Party, talk, israel and pro-Israel sentiment become larger and larger and larger, and it's not just pro-Israel sentiment, but it's actually sentiments that are very sympathetic to the arguments of the Israeli right that say not only should Israel exist, but Israel should have complete control of biblical territory of Israel, so there's no room for a Palestinian state in all this. So that's happening in the Republican side, on the Democratic side.

Dr. Brown: 26:42

I see there as being a real generational shift.

Dr. Brown: 26:44

I sense this when I teach, when I talk to people of various generations, that younger people on the left will tend to see this much more as sort of an issue of equity, of social justice and so on.

Dr. Brown: 27:00

So there's kind of a natural tendency to say, okay, who's the oppressed and who's the oppressor who got Palestinians who are being denied national rights, being denied human rights, and we have an Israeli state that is violating their human rights, colonizing, exceeding their land and so forth and so on. And these arguments resonate in, especially in younger progressive circles, and it's a problem, I think, for the Democratic Party, because it got essentially a split base an older generation that looked at Israel one way as being sort of an American ally, as being a hero, a small country that managed to defend itself, created out of the ashes of the Holocaust, and so on. That resonates with an older generation of people on the left, and the younger generation that says hold on a second, you know you're going to tell us a Black Lives Matter, but Palestinian lives, don't? We see some continuity here and that's something that becomes, I think, more pronounced, really, even just within the last four or five years or so.

Shawn: 28:05

So I want to dig into a couple of things that you talked about, and I don't quite know how to separate out political ideology in this, and maybe that's the point, but there are three areas of interest that are at play in the region. There's obviously more, but there are three that I want to talk about, and one is the Israeli government. There is American involvement, and then the third is Arab world interests in the region and how these interplay and exacerbate or maybe temper the situation in the region. So let's start with Israel, though. So Netanyahu's government, his current government, is characterized as being the most conservative, the most far right government in Israel's history, and you know he's, rightly or wrongly, taking a lot of heat for the events of October 7th, both the events of that day and Israel's response to it. The opinion generally seems to be shifting against him, not just in Israel, but globally, and again, fairly or unfairly. I'm not taking a side here, but I do wonder how Netanyahu's government has influenced the situation, for the good or the bad.

Dr. Brown: 29:09

Well, yeah, this is a government that is a coalition, and it's a coalition, I would say, between sort of the traditional is really right, which is nationalistic Israel is hostile to the idea of territorial compromise with the Palestinians, but willing to count some variation of it and then what might be considered the far right, but which is what I would call sort of the nationalist religious camp, and this is a group there's a couple of political parties in it who tend to be drawn much more from Orthodox Jews, who see this not just as a national conflict between Israelis and Palestinians but really focus on Zionism's religious nature and say, essentially, this is the territory that was promised to us in the Bible, this is Jewish land and non-Jews are here, but they're not going to be full set of this fundamentally a Jewish country and it has to remain so, and any sort of territorial compromises is unacceptable and that's been always there on the far right of the Israeli political factor.

Dr. Brown: 30:24

But they're now essential members of this current growing coalition and they certainly affect policy. When the October crisis happened, Netanyahu was able to widen his cabinet slightly and bring in some people a little bit more from the center, but that far right, that national religious camp is still very much in their. They've got key ministries like finance. They've got internal security ministry and so they're certainly able to affect policy to block revenue transfers, to give essentially some cover to Jews in West Bank or Tak Palestinians, and they're definitely affecting policy. They make it very difficult when it comes to any kind of pressure to limit the scale of the fighting in Gaza, to protect civilians or that sort of thing. This group can really try to throw a monkey wrench in any sort of diplomatic efforts.

Shawn: 31:24

This is maybe rank speculation, but does this current conflict doom Netanyahu's leadership?

Dr. Brown: 31:32

People have said that and I think ultimately it probably will, but it's not clear. So in Israeli political terms, there are people who could never stand in Netanyahu and the country might be divided 50-50 prior to the recent outbreak and it would pretty much down the middle on the pro versus anti Netanyahu. His personality was really almost the center of Israeli politics. What happened we'll talk about some of what it did was convince even some Israelis who were kind of in the pro Netanyahu camp. Hold on a second. This was an enormous disaster. He's got to take responsibility and that's never been Netanyahu's strong suit.

Dr. Brown: 32:13

So the idea that his political career would be over soon as the Israeli response was deciding you don't throw somebody over in the middle of warfare but as soon as this is over, netanyahu's got to go that began to spread and be accepted pretty widely and certainly his standing in public opinion polls has absolutely plummeted and if there were to be an election today, his party would lose conceivably half of its seats. He couldn't put together a coalition today. No-transcript. The war keeps going and there is now a slightly broader coalition that's keeping him as prime minister. So it's not clear that there's going to be any end to the war anytime soon? If you ask me, is Netanyahu going to be prime minister two years from now? I would say probably not, but it's no longer looking as certain as it did immediately after the October attacks.

Shawn: 33:12

We talked a little bit about the political situation related to Israel in the United States and the evolving partisan divide, but I am interested in the not only American involvement but the position that America or the United States may end up taking, as it relates to not just aid for Israel but support generally for Israel, and it does seem like both parties right now are.

Shawn: 33:38

I almost feel like the best way to characterize this is chaos. The Republican party is divided, there are hardline Republican supporters of Israel and there are hardline nationalists on the right that would rather be more conservative, with at least the financing side of it, and then, as we discussed, related to the generational divide on the Democratic side and support for Israel v Palestine. And then you have President Biden, who seems to be struggling with landing on a position, or at least that position is evolving from what we understand. You know he has a very public support for Israel, but it seems as if, privately, he's evolving a bit and frustrated with Netanyahu and he's definitely alluding to more sympathetic position as it relates to Palestinians. And I guess I'm wondering how much this chaos in the United States could have a tangible impact on the tension in the region and where you, given I suppose the history and the current situation in the United States see this going.

Dr. Brown: 34:41

I think it has had a real effect. I mean, the Biden administration began with essentially an unlimited and unqualified public support for Israel and that was remarkable. It caused discontent among some younger members of the Democratic Party and others, but it was absolutely remarkable. You know, by personally visiting Israel. You have the United States publicly opposing and continuing to publicly oppose calls for a ceasefire. You have the Americans saying things like you know, this can't end with a mass storm power and essentially endorsing some of Israel's warings.

Dr. Brown: 35:25

I think there was a little bit more nuance in private and that may have grown a little bit. There was an attempt, I think, by the United States to persuade Israel not to widen their conflict to Iran and Lebanon and so on, and that was successful. And there was an attempt to sort of gently pressure Israel saying, okay, if you win this war, then what are you going to do? What are you going to do on the day after? But that was pretty gentle and it was probably a lot more private than in public as the war has gone on, as the extent that destruction of lives and property in Gaza has mounted and we created a situation which something like 80% of the population in Gaza has been driven from their homes, they've leveled schools and universities and so on.

Dr. Brown: 36:11

This amount of destruction, and as it goes on and on, and as it's clear that the Israelis will not articulate any kind of vision for any sort of post-war situation that would be at all viable for Palestinians, there is evidence of discomfort, but we're also getting closer and closer to the November election, and so I think what the Biden administration has done is essentially begin to signal discontent a little bit in public, but also through the leaking of context, and you'll see this sometimes. Biden is frustrated. He's used a few obscenities to refer to Netanyahu, and this gets leaked to the Israeli press and so on. But I think the real attempt is, by a presidential reelection campaign that is trying to square this circle, of taking essentially a pro-Israeli policy and trying to sort of wink nudge, nudge to opponents within the democratic base saying, don't worry, we're really pressured Israel behind the scenes.

Shawn: 37:17

And I don't want to overlook the players here are not the United States, palestine and Israel. This is much more of a global issue, but particularly for Arab neighbors in the region, and I don't want to overlook the impact that this conflict has on them and also their role in the region. So I don't want to paint all Arab countries with a broad brush, but I do wonder if we can talk a little bit about some of the bigger players in the region and how they've been contributing to the present conflict or not, and the role that they're playing now.

Dr. Brown: 37:51

Sure. So there are some key actors within the region, but you almost have to distinguish between the policies of states and their leaders and sort of general opinion within the region. General opinion within the region, outside of Israel, within the Arab world, sees this as I don't know. The terms used are extremely strong. We might refer to the United States very often. You know war in Gaza, this is a war on Gaza. This is genocidal. This is Israel's attack, Israel's attempt to eliminate the Palestinian people, and so it's an extremely strong language being used and the United States is being seen as essentially aiding and embedding and even arming and supplying an Israeli attack on an entire people. That's how it's generally seen within the region. There's not a lot of dissent from that.

Dr. Brown: 38:43

At the same time, you have states involved, that who basically reoriented themselves over the last generation or so to say. Essentially, look, we're states, we have interest, yeah, we've got sympathies for the Palestinians, but we're not going to make that the centerpiece of all of our policy within the region. Israel's a strong state. It's not going away. Let's just work out some kind of modus vendi that might be something quiet or it might be actually normal diplomatic relation.

Dr. Brown: 39:13

It's difficult for those states to move forward with anything more on public wildest wars going on, and so they have kind of found a position where they say we're not going to break ties with Israel over this, but we're not going to move forward at all, or states like Saudi Arabia that have not established ties with Israel won't take the step of doing so unless they get specific things in return. And what they need to hear from Israel is we're actually going to sign on to a process that leads to a two state solution, and especially for Saudi Arabia. This isn't just about Israel, it's also about the United States. They're saying the United States, you want us to accept Israel within the region. Not only do you have to deliver something from Israel, but you have to deliver something to us. You have to give us a security guarantee, and then we'll sign on to this American view of the region.

Shawn: 40:09

You know, in a lot of ways, for all of the intervention in a conflict and here I'm talking across, you know, many countries, across many decades it feels as if we seem to consistently be kind of just in the same place. Or maybe worse, if we take into consideration October 7th, and I guess it's really difficult not to see this as an unsolvable issue, and by that I'm talking about to some type of an end that's agreeable maybe, if not endorseable, to all of the parties involved. When you think about this, do you see this as something that has a solution?

Dr. Brown: 40:45

It has a solution that you know way to get there. There are all kinds of solutions and I think a lot of the problem policy thinking is that there's been a lot of focus on the solution and a lot of wishful thinking about how to get there. So, two-state solution, israel and Palestine living peacefully side by side Great, how do you get there? We're actually moving farther apart from that. So you throw up your hand and say, okay, you're not going to have a two-state solution, let's have one state with equal rights for everybody. Well, israelis will say, especially the Israeli. Jews will say wait a second, we've got our own state right now. You want us to dissolve in a state where we still become the minority? No thanks, how do you get there? So I think, in terms of being insoluble and fitter, no, but in insoluble in practice, I think it is At least for the next, I would say the short to medium term.

Dr. Brown: 41:38

A generation later, things will look different. I mean, all sorts of things look different. Germany and France fought through rewards in 70 years that became allies. Something different is possible. I didn't think, if you'd ask me in the 1970s, when I was a kid, when will apartheid end in South Africa and I'd say half a century from now it ended. So there are ways this might be different, but in terms of becoming different anytime soon or there being any viable process that can lead to some kind of peaceful outcome, I don't see that as likely. Honestly. I don't think it's likely in my lifetime.

Shawn: 42:21

If we talk about just the present conflict, have you given any thought to how you think this might end?

Dr. Brown: 42:28

Yes, and my short answer is that I'm not sure that it will. It will not end with a bang, but with a lot of whippery. So when people talk to immediately after the beginning of the Israeli military campaign, they will say what would happen the day after the conflict. And I remember thinking at the time I'm not sure there will be a clear day after there's an Israeli military campaign with a set of articulated goals about eliminating Hamas military capability and eliminating its government that are kind of open-ended.

Dr. Brown: 43:03

Also, the kinds of security measures that Israel has been openly talking about are ones that remain in a permanent presence in Gaza in some way, shape or form. They've been creating buffer zones, they've been destroying neighborhoods and towns and villages, and they've been talking about the same things like Israel is. Only Israel could be responsible for its own security in Gaza, which implies some continuing level of military operations and so on. So I think that what we're looking at is a situation in which, in the absence of some kind of grand political settlement, a grand diplomatic outcome, the kinds that the United States is pursuing, what you'll see instead is a situation in which you have lower-level conflict, continued Israeli sort of occupation of less inhabited areas in Gaza, a rearrangement of Gaza population, a prohibition on gossips, doing much in terms of rebuilding and a way in which humanitarian aid is channeled in through agencies in the Israelis find acceptable, and this being essentially the indefinite future. That's what I think is a situation that we're moving towards, that we're already in its halfway towards.

Shawn: 44:17

All right, final question you ready for it? Sure, what's something interesting you've been reading, watching, listening to or doing lately, oh gosh.

Dr. Brown: 44:25

Well, this is honestly the most depressing time to follow this in my professional career, so some of the things I've been doing and reading have been trying to distract myself from it. But I think for those people who are interested in following this, I think there's. You know, these are lively societies. It's just an awful time.

Dr. Brown: 44:45

Israeli press is very accessible in English. I mean, there's the aren'ts, there's the post, there's times in Israel. There's ways to follow kind of the Israeli debates on this that are kind of a little bit like breaking from a fire hose sometimes. On the Palestinian side there's an awful lot less that's accessible in English. That's actually part of the Palestinian problem. This is a havin' problem articulating their selves, their positions, in ways that international community can understand. There's actually even an outfit in Beirut, however, called the Zetunis Center Z-E-I-T-O-N-T-O-U-N-E-H. It's called the Zetunis Center, which is they're actually the pro-Hamas think tank, so you want to find out just what this conflict looks like from a completely different point of view. That's something that's real interesting to watch as well.

Dr. Brown: 45:34

International crisis groups give some great sort of overall analytical reports. For those people who've got time and don't mind, 40-page documents with lots of what notes of international crisis groups. Finally, I would say, if it doesn't sound too egotistical, there's a collection that a colleague of mine with the Carnegie Endowment and I have been trying to put out. We're trying to communicate from various points of view. Just one of the relevant debates how do people see this conflict? We first had a group of Israelis right in saying here's the debates that are going on in Israel and then a group of Palestinians saying here's the debates that are going on. There's a couple more installments on that, international regional actors and so on. So that's at the Carnegie Endowment wwwceiporg. You can see that governance and Gaza collection. So those would be some things to read. But I'd also say that anybody who is interested in following this, you'll probably wind up being a little bit discouraged and dismayed. So have some good distracting novel to turn to when the reality is a little bit too much.

Shawn: 46:44

Dr Brown, thanks for taking the time. I've really appreciated the conversation, thank you. I want to close this episode with a plea to our better angels. In the contemporary world, where conflicts such as the one in Gaza continue to arise, the imperative of compassion for all individuals, especially civilians caught in conflict zones, cannot be overstated. The essence of compassion lies in the recognition of a shared humanity, an acknowledgement that, regardless of one's nationality or religion or political beliefs, every person deserves to live in safety, peace and dignity. The conflict in Gaza, a symbol of longstanding disputes and hostilities, underscores the dire consequences that ensue when compassion is overshadowed by animosity and aggression. Civilians in these conflict zones often bear the brunt of the suffering they are subjected to, the horrors of violence, displacement, loss of loved ones and the destruction of their homes and communities, and the psychological and physical scars inflicted upon these individuals can span generations, perpetuating cycles of grief and hostility and suffering Compassion. Compassion means advocating for and implementing policies that first protect civilians, ensuring that they have access to humanitarian aid and supporting efforts to rebuild what has been lost. It involves listening to the stories of all of those who have suffered, acknowledging their pain and taking concrete steps to alleviate their suffering. Compassion should prompt international actors and conflicting parties to prioritize diplomatic solutions and peace-building measures over military interventions, recognizing that true security and stability are achieved not through dominance but through justice and mutual understanding.

Shawn: 48:33

The conflict in Gaza is a poignant reminder of the devastation that arises from a lack of compassion. It calls upon humanity to look beyond divisions, beyond partisanship, which is reductive and harmful, to see the suffering of civilians in conflict zones and to act with empathy and resolve. In fostering compassion for all people, we pave the way toward a more peaceful, just and interconnected world. With that, I'm going to urge us all to consider the devastation and the pain and the horror and the hopelessness that innocents in Israel and Palestine are enduring right now, and to avoid painting with a broad brush that vilifies entire groups and to the innocent souls that have lost their lives. Godspeed Alright. Check back soon for another episode of Deep Dive dressing rooms. Translation goes back to transg言.